


unlearn.

by donutsandcoffee



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: (aka the ib podcast-equivalent for fahc), Fake AH Crew, Illegal Box, M/M, Minor Character Death, a journey for emotional catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsandcoffee/pseuds/donutsandcoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p><br/><b>unlearn</b><br/>/ʌnˈləːn/ • verb<br/>discard (something learned, especially a bad habit or false or outdated information) from one's memory.</p>
</blockquote><br/>[fake ah crew; illegal box in parentheses]
            </blockquote>





	unlearn.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is, ultimately, a fake ah crew fic. you don't need to know a single thing about internet box, but there _are_ going to be some references you'll miss. if you ever feel like checking out the internet box, [here's](http://michaelsgavin.tumblr.com/post/139412041755/can-you-rec-some-internet-box-episodes) a little nudge towards that direction.
> 
> this verse--where ray, michael and lindsay had a crew called illegal box before joining the fake ah crew--is as much the ib group chat's as much it is mine, so credit when credit's due: shoutout to [elena](http://raywood.tumblr.com), [viri](http://madkingray.tumblr.com), [rayne](http://raymichael.tumblr.com) and [denise](http://homo-cidal.tumblr.com). this fic wouldn't have been here without our headcanons. i hope you don't mind i'm turning it into raywood.
> 
> i made it purposely vague in this fic due to the circumstances of the narrative, but in my mind as i wrote this, ryan's sister is meg.
> 
> also posted [on tumblr](http://michaelsgavin.tumblr.com/post/139856221790/unlearn).

Ryan has met Ray exactly once.

Wisecracking, firecracker, hellhound Ray.

That’s the short version.

 

* * *

 

 

The long version is—complicated, to say the least. The long version is messy and blood-soaked and only makes sense half the time, but he figures that’s something people signed up for when they get involved with Ray.

The long version is that Ryan does meet Ray on a daily basis after Ray joined the crew, except—not quite, not exactly, because the Ray he’s working with and _Ray_ —the one with cocksure smiles and rapid-fire insults—aren’t quite the same people.

Ryan met _Ray_ exactly once as they pointed a gun at each other in the middle of a department store. Ray was on top of the cashier table, glock in both hands, and even though he was crouching he was still taller than Ryan, who was—granted—bending down behind the counter, shielding himself from incoming bullets.

“Howdy,” Ray said with a smirk, sharp and confident. Ryan was a little charmed and trusted him not at all.

“The police force must be desperate enough to have hired someone as… unorthodox as you are,” Ryan observed, matching Ray’s smirk with one of his own. “Or is howdy an accepted greeting within the force these days? Didn’t really keep up with the protocol ever since I defected, you see.”

Ryan half-expected a bullet to the head, but instead Ray’s aim wavered as his expression morphed into one of confusion. “Wait, you’re not the police.”

Ryan frowned. “Aren’t _you_ the police?”

“No?” Ray said, and it was as much an answer as it was a question. “Are you in a crew?”

“Yeah?” Ryan was taken aback by the turn the conversation was taking that he found himself answering questions he would never do from a stranger pointing multiple guns to his face in any other situation. “Geoff’s,” he said, and clarified, “uh—Ramsey’s.”

Ray lowered his guns immediately with a groan. “Shit—seriously? God damn it—Michael,” he said to a microphone tied around his wrist, “dude. Did you hear that.”

“GOD _DAMN_ IT MIKE!” A voice—Michael—boomed from the small radio on the choker around Ray’s neck, and Ray grimaced. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me. Why the fuck are we overlapping with Ramsey’s group.”

Another, softer voice chirped in. “Please stop screaming. I’m very delicate.”

Clearly ignoring the voice, Michael yelled back, “I don’t fucking care! You said the place was clear!”

“And it was!” The softer voice retorted back, “I checked the system. Milford Mall is clear for today.”

And it was. Ryan was the one who checked the system—the Los Santos underground information pool that, among other uses, ensures no two same crews gun down the same place at the same time—and Milford Mall was clear for that day. The problem was… they weren’t. At Milford Mall, that is.

Ryan didn’t have the heart to tell.

He thankfully didn’t have to, since Ray himself delivered the grim news of, “uh, Mike. This is Milford _Plaza_.”

“Isn’t that the same thing, though?”

Ray ran a hand through his face. “Milford Mall is two blocks from here.”

There was silence.

And then, the soft voice went, “ooooh.”

“IS THAT THE ONLY THING YOU CAN SAY FOR YOURSELF,” Michael yelled through the radio, and Ryan felt he could hear Michael’s real voice reverberated through the walls of the mall, too.

“Well, it’s just one word, I don’t see what’s the big deal about it.”

“WE LITERALLY ROBBED THE WRONG SHOPPING MALL,” a different voice, equally angry, chimed in.

There was another silence except for the laughter from a vaguely feminine voice.

“Okay, so I may have made a mistake,” the soft voice conceded.

“You _think_ ,” Ray deadpanned and sighed, but it was fond. He shook his head with a small, exasperated smile that was more reminiscent of a doting father whose child had accidentally spilled a glass of milk instead of a gun-totting criminal whose partner had made them go through life-threatening heist only to rob the wrong place, and Ryan blinked in surprise when Ray flashed him an apologetic smile as he said, “hey, sorry for the trouble….?”

“Ryan.”

“Ryan, yeah,” Ray said, testing the name as he put his guns away, “sorry for the whole, uh, misunderstanding. No harm done, though, right?”

The air was thick with gunpowder as glasses and debris littered their feet with shards, but Ryan hadn’t heard any bad news from Jack, so. “That’s one way to see it?” He said.

“Between this idiot and our resident jizz wall-wiper, our crew isn’t really the brightest tool in the shed, so, mind putting in some good words to Ramsey?” Ray said, and then, half-jokingly added, “seriously, though, please don’t kill us. I’m Hispanic. That’s racist.”

“O…kay?” Ryan agreed, for a lack of better words. Everything was happening so fast.

Ray grinned at that. “Thanks!” He said as he moved towards the door and waved, “I’m Ray, by the way. See ya!” And, right after he disappeared into the hallway, called out, “bet on it!”

And then he was gone. Just like that.

Ryan found himself _wheezing_ with laughter even ten minutes later. He couldn’t quite figure them out yet, the crew that was a collection of sneers and inside jokes, but that was certainly an experience he wouldn’t easily forget.

  

* * *

 

The next time they met, Ray was standing in front of the crew’s apartment soaked to the bones, blood on his shirt and death in his eyes. Behind him a couple stood in each other’s arms—Michael and Lindsay, Ryan would learn later—but Ryan couldn’t see the rest of their whirlwind of a crew.

“Please take us in,” Ray said, hoarse and rasp and so very _lost_ , and Ryan realized he would never see the rest of that crew again.

  

* * *

 

Ray is sprawled on the couch, face down. Pieces of his disassembled gun strewn across the table, half-cleaned, and Ryan recognizes it as one of the glock Ray used when they first met.

The gun is familiar, but the owner no longer is.

Ryan doesn’t quite get it yet, but he’s learning. Geoff’s crew is the only crew he has ever had, but he understands quite a thing or two about pasts you can’t quite forget, memories that thrum underneath your skin and beat slightly out of sync with your heart, not quite dead, not quite alive. Ryan takes one look at Ray and knows that a trail of bodies lie in his wake.

And _how_. Ray’s previous crew is very much here, pressed in between the unfinished jokes Ray has to stop himself from making, hidden in the habits Ray tries too hard to break. It is sharpening his smile until it looks a lot like heartbreak, and when he laughs, Ryan can hear the grief in every consonant.

Ryan is learning, but Ray’s—Ray’s unlearning.

Ryan realizes with a start that he wants to do something to help. Something. _Anything_.

 

* * *

 

Ryan sets two cups of coffee down one morning—sugar and milk for Ray, black for him. Ray looks up at him, barely masking the startled look on his face, and Ryan wonders when was the last time he didn’t bristle like an upset cat at the slightest hint of human interaction.

“You know,” he says, and because he doesn’t think Ray would appreciate small talk, dives head first into the topic, “you haven’t exactly told us what happened.”

Ray stares at him over the rim of his cup, but doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, like—“ Ryan starts, pauses; sifting through his mental vocabulary before settling with, “ _before_.”

Ray raises his eyebrow. “Seriously, Haywood?”

His tone is joking, but his eyes are anything but, so Ryan tries to brush it off with a shrug. “Hey, no pressure. Was just wondering. None of us are exactly Chatty Cathy, but we were never particularly tightlipped about ourselves, so. Just putting it out there. It doesn’t hurt to let go, sometimes.”

There’s something unreadable in Ray’s expression as he echoes, incredulous, “letting go.”

Ryan shrugs again. “Have you—I don’t know—” Ryan’s usually good with euphemisms, but there’s something about Ray that makes him trip over his own words, “been traumatized or something?”

Ray just looks at him and says, “have _you_?”

Which, fair point. Before Ryan can find a way to take his foot out of his mouth, Ray stands up and pats Ryan’s shoulder dismissively as he walks past and says, “sorry, don’t think I have enough money for a therapy session.”

Ray’s coffee is left on the table, half-drunk. There are a few drops on the table, carelessly spilled, as if its last user slammed the cup down too hard.

So. Not the right way to do this, Ryan muses.

 

* * *

 

 

There are initials inked to Ray’s skin, scrawls of Jack’s and Geoff’s and everyone else’s. _It’s a thing he does_ , Michael explained one time but didn’t elaborate much past, _consider it a compliment._

Ryan does. His initial is on Ray’s collarbone, permanently etched onto the skin. Ryan feels his own pulse race every time the collar of Ray’s loose T-shirt rides a little lower, flashing a dark _R.H._ on the skin. Near—his heart. Geoff’s is right beside his—a sloppy _G.R_ in identical handwriting—and Ryan tries not to think too much about the heart thing.

There are other initials he doesn’t recognize, too. A mangled _M.K._ on his left ankle. A smudged _B.D_ on the inside of his wrist. A barely-there _D.S._ on his right thigh. There’s probably more that Ryan doesn’t know of.

Gavin asks about it once, because he’s Gavin.

“Everyone gets tattoos for a reason, right?” Ray says without looking up from his 3DS, “Did I get mine for a reason? Yeah. Am I going to tell you? Nah, you have to reach level ten friendship to unlock my Deep Dark Secret.”

Gavin whines, and inches closer to Ray. “So what level am I?”

Ray scoffs, and deadpans, “like, negative two.”

Geoff barks a laughter at Gavin’s indignant squawks, and Ryan can’t help smiling, too.

Ryan still doesn’t know the right way to do it, but he finds solace in knowing that at least Gavin knows less.

 

 

* * *

 

Deep Dark Secret or not, they fall into a rhythm.

Ryan’s learning his space in the bigger crew, and they grow into him quickly enough. It’s a nice thing, this camaraderie between them, close enough sometimes he looks at the crew and thinks, _this is_ — _nice._ Michael swears like a drunk and Ray tells the darkest of jokes, and with Lindsay’s dizzying honesty the three of them fit the spaces in between that Ryan never realized were there.

There’s a certain kind of tenderness they don’t really speak about, the kind of bond they’d die for—the kind of bond they’d _kill_ for. It’s seeping into his bones, coursing through his veins, and it’s what makes him jump into the bullets-riddled air, the stench of blood, the spaces between cut-off limbs and lifeless bodies. This is more than a job, more than loyalty—this is more than what he thought would do for someone, but he would, he would, he would.

He likes to think Ray feels the same way.

 

* * *

 

The interrogation room smells faintly of blood and smoke, and the chair he’s on is hard and cold. He’s been sitting on it for hours now—bound tightly with his back bent at an uncomfortable angle—and his ass starts to feel sore.

Not that Ryan expects a five-star-hotel treatment from these people. Would be too much of an unrealistic expectation, especially after the three rounds of beating and a few cracked ribs he got. He tells his kidnappers as much.

“Where,” the leader of the gang, short and burly with too many muscles for Ryan’s liking, doesn’t appreciate his witty remark and grinds out, “is your leader.”

As if Ryan would tell him. “You have to be specific here. I mean, what exactly do you think constitutes as ‘leadership’—”

Bright sunbursts of pain flare from his right cheekbone as metal pipe connects with that side of his face, and the world around him tilts just so. His vision blurs, for a second, but it returns as soon as it was gone.

Ryan isn’t afraid. Whichever small-time gang that took him is so insignificant he doesn’t even bother learning their name, and fear has been beaten out of him ever since—ever _since_. He also believes, with unwavering certainty that reaches a point of suicidal madness, that his crew will find him. That all he needs to do is wait.

Faith is oft rewarded.

“Sir!” A voice says, its owner standing near the only source of light in the room, “it’s the Mad King. His crew—”

But the man never gets to finish his sentence. There’s a loud _bang_ , the all-too familiar sound of bullet embedded into one’s skull, and the man falls on his knees, dropping to the floor with a thud.

The room explodes into motion. Ryan can’t quite make the figures—dark room and swollen eyes don’t exactly go hand-in-hand—but there’s enough telltales. The acrid burn of gunpowder in the air, the sounds of bodies hitting the ground. Whoever’s saving him is good, and—they’re better than anyone he knows.

Ryan is mentally going through a list of his acquaintances when someone cuts his ropes, grabs him by the arm and says, “let’s go.”

It’s—Ray. Ryan would recognize that voice even in his sleep.

It shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. Ray is part of his crew, after all, has been for the past eight months. Ryan’s name has been inscribed permanently onto Ray’s skin, like he has passed some sort of a messed up form of a rite of passage to earn Ray’s trust and loyalty.

But at the same time the fact that Ray’s here—warm fingers pressing onto his blackened arm—blindsides him. This isn’t the Ray he knows, who always stands one building away, protecting the crew behind the safety of his rifle scope. This is— _Ray_. Hellhound, firecracker. Not quite wisecracking, but. But.

They run past countless bodies on the ground and into the night, never stopping; Ryan hurts all over, and he thinks one of his legs has a fractured bone, but there’s a low buzz at the back of his head, telling him that if he stops running he’ll never catch up to Ray.

Outside it’s already dark. The street lamps in the area don’t work, and Ryan listens to the _tap, tap, tap_ of Ray’s shoes against the ground to know where to go, to know that he’s still there. He finds himself staring at Ray’s back as his eyes adjust to the darkness, the familiar purple hoodie Ray never leaves without, washed pale in the night.

They only stop when they reach an area he recognizes—the park across their apartment. Ray stops, and Ryan finally lets himself slump down to the ground to catch his breath.

When his breathing evens out, he turns towards Ray to say his thanks and finds himself shoved back to the ground.

He wants to ask _why_ , but before he can form a word, Ray is crouching beside him, his hand brushing against Ryan’s knee in some sort of an apologetic gesture, and Ray’s voice is sandpaper-rough when he says, “god _damn it_ , Ryan.”

Ryan stays silent, because he doesn’t know what to do.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ray curses, and there’s a dry hiccup in his voice, “you can’t just do this kind of shit, you dumbass, getting kidnapped like the teenage girl of some kind of rich white politician—” and he pauses, for a moment, long enough for Ryan to look up and sees the tears in his eyes. “You _idiot._

“I can’t lose anyone again—“ Ray says, choking on—his tears, his own words, his heart, “not after—“ he starts, gulps in a lungful of air because he can’t say it yet, can’t say the barely-there names scarred onto his skin, “I _can’t_.”

And then Ray doubles over, and Ryan is familiar enough with panic attacks to know one when he sees one, so he quickly crouches over Ray, hand rubbing soothing circles on the small of his back. Ray dry heaves, tears drowning the grass below, his fingernails digging into his own palm, and he’s babbling but Ryan feels that he’s not quite there, with him—Ray’s cursing, but it’s directed to the ghost of long-taken lives that can’t hear them.

Ray’s unlearning. It’s a process.

 

 

* * *

 

“That was pathetic,” Ray says. The embarrassed flush on his cheek is a stark contrast to the defiant way he tips his chin up. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Ryan would accept the apology, except—there’s nothing to apologize for.

So he inches closer to Ray, sits next to him and stretches an arm across his shoulder, and tells him, “I had a sister.”

“Is she hot?” Ray jokes, but it’s not unkind. A knee-jerk response, one of his unbroken habits.

Ryan laughs. “She was barely eighteen when she died,” he tells Ray, matter-of-factly, “I was sixteen.”

“Ouch, shit man, sorry,” Ray begins, but Ryan waves him off.

“Nah, it’s not—I’m not telling you this for sympathy or anything. Just—” he breathes, deep. It happened years ago, but when he closes his eyes he could still see her, hair a forest fire and lips the browning color of a fallen leaf. “Our parents died before I could remember them, but we were never adopted. Slipped through the system, every time. Child services never caught wind of us.”

“Your sister,” Ray says, realizing where the story is going.

“My sister,” Ryan nods. “I was never in this business, you see. Not before Geoff. Church-going, respectable school. Clean criminal record and all.”

“But not your sister.”

“She was knee-deep in it before she even turned fifteen,” he says, and it’s almost a whisper, like he’s confessing for her. “Trained personally by someone from the upper level of her crew. Their very own personal child assassin. She bled and drew blood with her hands so I could go to fucking prep school.”

Ray goes quiet.

“The worst thing is,” he continues, “the worst thing is, I never—knew. I didn’t find out. When I did, she was six-feet-under and left me with nothing but blood-soaked debt. She suffered until her death, and I never bothered to ask her why she cried herself to sleep every night.”

When he looks up, he thinks he’s crying, a little. He always does, when it comes to her.

Ray looks like he’s seeing a ghost. “You were young,” he points out.

“So were you,” Ryan counters, and looks at him. “So are you.”

“Ryan.”

“Listen. Listen—sometimes I wake up thinking that I can smell her cooking, or feeling the brush of her knuckles on my forehead when I surf the channels for too long,” he says. “She died a decade ago and I’m still here, unlearning, every single day.”

“She was your sister,” Ray says, hoarse. “She was _blood_. My crew was—”

“Family,” Ryan presses. “Like Michael and Lindsay still are, to you. Like—we are. If you’ll have us.”

Ray bristles under the unspoken accusation, indignant. “Your names—all of you. They’re on my skin. You know what that means.”

“Then there’s nothing to apologize,” Ryan says, and hopes his words finally reach Ray. “It’s okay for you to grieve, and cry. And it’s also okay to let go, a small piece at a time. Just because you don’t remember them every waking moment doesn’t mean you are forgetting.”

Ray looks at him, mute.

“They’re gone, like my sister, but you’re here,” Ryan points out, and inches closer until their shoulders bump into each other. “You have us now.” _You have me now_.

“It’s hard,” Ray says.

“Of course it is,” Ryan agrees.

They stay like that, for a long time—Ray in Ryan’s arm, shoulders pressed against each other’s. When Ray finally looks up, there’s still death in his eyes, but there’s something else, too. That firecracker glint, the hellhound edge. A wisecrack on the tip of his tongue, waiting to spill, to cross that threshold.

Unlearning. Unlearning. Unlearning.

Returning.

 

* * *

 

Ryan has met Ray exactly once.

Sometimes, these days, he still catches glimpses of him—wisecracking, firecracker, hellhound Ray—and it hurts and soothes, at the same time, whenever Ray’s smile curves just right at a joke Ryan makes, the way his laughter bubbles up from his chest, welling up before it spills over, loud, carefree.

So Ryan waits. He’s not—in love, he doesn’t think he is, because love doesn’t happen to people like them, people with dreams built on fallen bodies and bloodshed beneath their feet. But Ryan waits anyway, because he _wants_ , selfishly, and he knows Ray’s meeting him halfway, and. And.

 _This isn’t love_ , Ryan thinks. _But it aches like—_

This is the short version.

It’s enough.

 


End file.
